Passed the Senate by a veto-proof margin. That’s not something that happens often in this state! If we can do that well in the House, we may be able to get this, despite the Dem governor. The GOP currently has a comfortable majority in the House, and pro-gun Dems are not yet extinct in this state. This might be doable!

I’ll have to apologize, but by now you know there’s not a party I can’t poop on.

Let’s wait and see if and how the legislation is enforced. I’m recalling how many people were giddy when Act 17 of 1995 banned the State Police from maintaining a handgun registry. It never slowed the cops for a minute, and eventually the State Supreme Court said what the cops were doing was just fine.

Cities like Philadelphia defied all of the earlier preemption laws with impunity, often making totally absurd legal arguments, and I’m not getting how words-on-paper are necessarily going to change things now.

Cities like Philadelphia defied all of the earlier preemption laws with impunity, often making totally absurd legal arguments, and I’m not getting how words-on-paper are necessarily going to change things now.

Because there was no (easy) mechanism to enforce. The words on paper are backed by an enforcement mechanism now. Instead of a person having to be directly impacted (the standing principle which is how most courts get out of doing their job), the law allows groups to have standing regardless and can sue.

The last time the pre-emption enforcement was passed, a bunch of municipalities were quick to change their illegal laws.

Sure Philly and their ilk will be more difficult, but we have a way to force them now.

First let me make clear I would rather this legislation be tried than not tried, and I don’t want to suggest I’m opposed to it.

But next let me say, “time will tell,” and I’m not wildly hopeful.

The first time I remember the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania declaring that municipalities absolutely, positively could not enforce their own hunting or firearms regulations was c. 1962 – 1963. I remember because I was in high school. That was what, 55 years ago?

Twenty-five years later a close (late) friend of mine went all the way to the State Supreme Court with the identical issue. And again the Supreme Court said municipalities could not enforce their own regulations. They have continued to do so.

Now, you could be right if the law makes it economically painful for municipalities to violate it, but I am not even confident of that. Judges are units of the same machine as cops and ruling poohbahs. They are reluctant to cause pain for their own.

My example for that is, some “teeth” were put into the state Sunshine Law some years back, and some school board members were fined some nominal amount like $100 each for misconduct involving conducting public business behind closed doors. But despite the low, nominal fines for a summary offense, they appealed their convictions. The next level of judge made a totally absurd judgment to invalidate their convictions; something like, since the law didn’t mention that specific school board by name, he didn’t see how the law applied to them.

If I’ve learned one thing along the way, it is that words-on-paper are not magic incantations that you and I can cite to make our masters bow down before us if we recite them correctly; laws are implemented by people who manipulate a system that never was intended to operate for our benefit.

This isn’t going to be comforting, but “time will tell” may very well be over centuries.

The Magna Carta, when it was first signed by King John, was pretty much ignored almost before the ink was dry. But it proved to be the seed that grew into things like the English Civil War, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

That seed literally took hundreds of years to grow, though…

At least, I’d *like* to think that the things we do today may potentially affect what generations will do centuries from now, and I’d *like* to think that it may even be for the better….

Hey now! Maybe I won’t have to continue to call them the laziest legislature this side of the Mississippi, which puts them high in running for laziest world wide! Maybe now they will be downgraded to second laziest!